Medical information is normally stored as either image data or plain text data. While more complex 3D representations of anatomical shapes, e.g. resulting from a model-based segmentation (MBS), become more frequently available, they are typically stored in special formats. For instance, the results of MBS are meshes containing the positions of points and connections between them.
The high data complexity of anatomical meshes makes it difficult to store such information in normal PACS or reporting systems. Furthermore, despite ongoing digitalization, the exchange of information over classical pathways such as phone or paper is still essential in daily clinical practice, which is especially difficult taking into account the complexity of the data. In particular, devices and computers in hospitals may not be connected to the internet for security reasons or are inaccessible due to restrictive firewalls, thereby making any direct electronic exchange of binary data impossible.
CN 102592160 B shows an encoding method for encoding matrix barcodes, the encoding method being characterized by the steps of generating a data flow of length “k” from source code data information according to encoding rules, selecting a debugging level “1” according to the data flow of length “k”, using the data flow of length k as input to generate a number “c” of debugging code characters in the Galois field according to algorithms of the debugging level “1”, adding the number c of debugging code characters to the data flow of length k in order to form a total data flow.